May 11, 2012

I recently ended a relationship with my girlfriend of four years. Things were always pretty damned good and I was happy with us, and she told me she was always happy with us. I mean I knew this girl inside and out, I always knew what she was thinking. I thought, “Hey cool. She’s the one for me. I found her. I’m a lucky one.” A couple of weeks ago we spent some time apart. She went off to the beach with three of her friends. Before she left we kissed and hugged and told each other how much we loved one another. When she got back, I was oh so excited to see her, but instead I got, “Ummm… we gotta talk.”

Yada yada yada. She broke up with me, and she took it pretty damn well. Didn’t even shed a tear. I was crushed. I vomited for days. Couldn’t eat a thing. Couldn’t sleep. My girl that went down to the beach was a complete 180 from the girl that came back. I still haven’t gotten any closure to the whole thing. Her reasons for the break-up were pretty vague. And this isn’t one of your “let’s separate and in the future who knows.” kind of break-ups. It was a “We will never be together ever again but we can still be good friends” kind of break-up.

I’ve been going through all the stages. The desperate “why oh why” stage. Then the denial stage. Then the anger stage, and so on and so forth. Now I’m just plainly at the “Huh?” stage. I have at least three friends who have had a similar experience and they have friends with the same experiences. To this day they are all still dumbfounded.

My questions are:

1) What is this “phenomonon” where the girl wakes up one day and her mind is completely changed without any warning? You’re a girl. Explain this to me.

2) Just as an aside, FOUR YEARS! I know, I know, “Better four than ten.” But what if I get into another relationship like this and I waste another four-plus years of my life?

– Totally Bewildered

Dear Bewildered.

Ouchouchouchouchouch I am so sorry. Yes, indeedy, you must have felt dumbfounded, blindsided, deafened by her silence.

Now. To take your questions backwards: Yes. Four years is a wicked long time (and your math is correct; ten is even longer). But. Even though they ended painfully, I dare say that you don’t really feel like these years were “wasted.” Especially because, as you describe them, you didn’t spend the last, um, three and a half feeling like you were about to break up. You had four full, non-pre-breakup years. The real waste would be if you now decided to stay single only so as not to let that happen again.

Also. There are many “girl things” in this world: mourning Diana, “Dirty Dancing,” ice hockey. “Waking up and changing her mind,” however, is not one of them. Not only because changing one’s mind suddenly is a gender-neutral phenom, but also because it’s not what happened here. I can practically guarantee you that’s she’s been mulling this one over for a while. Yes, she was happy — mostly. But there was something bothering her, I don’t know what, and evidently she felt that it wasn’t necessary or useful to rock the boat by sharing. Whatever was bugging her was probably more of a one-way “feeling” than a two-way problem, and hence, something — she figured — that she needed to consider on her own, not discuss with you. (I am not endorsing this [lack of] approach; I’m just taking an educated stab.)

Then, I’m thinking– and this is a girl thing — she ran the deal by the beach babe board, and the resolution was “bail.” That’s what happened here, probably, and that’s what happens on “women’s weekends” in general. You hang with your Ya-Yas, they sort out your life. Now don’t you go blaming her galpals for turning her against you or anything. Their job, as good friends, is to listen carefully to what she really wants, and then tell her what she just said. Had they heard it in her voice, they could just as easily have coached her to stay.

I’m also assuming that, being good friends, they did not tape-record their conversations. So — galling as it is — you may get a satisfactory answer to “Huh?” You may need to search out another, less her-dependent source of closure. Like going to the beach with the guys.

If you learned something or experienced personal growth, the time spent in a relationship was not a waste.

If you’re waiting on an external source to provide closure, then you will never find closure (not even 14 years later).

BG is correct. This was not a sudden decision. Usually there’s some indication before the breakup that something has changed. (Not enough of an indication to figure out what’s happening in advance, but enough to recognize it in retrospect.) It seems likely that Bewildered’s girlfriend was simply a better actress than my ex-girlfriends.

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